Dirty Sexy Knitting

by Christie Ridgway

  His knees were going soft again. He had to get away. He had to get air.

  Outside the shop, he dumped the latté in a can and pulled in deep breaths of salt-laden oxygen. He scanned the cars coming in and out of the lot, and like the other night, noticed a vehicle cruise the area a couple of times before settling into a space. He kept his eye on the little car, surprised to realize that the driver was none other than Marlys Weston.

  He didn’t think she’d been the one circling the lot that other time, but he waylaid her anyway as she approached Malibu & Ewe.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  She scowled at him. “I thought maybe I’d get into knitting.”

  “There’s a lot of other yarn shops in the Los Angeles area.”

  “Excuse me, but I didn’t consult my yellow pages. I thought about knitting and then I thought about here.”

  Gabe wanted to leave it alone, but Christ, this was the woman who’d caused Cassandra and her sisters grief by dishing to the tabloids about their father. “Your mischief won’t be welcome here.”

  “You mean I won’t be welcome here.” For a moment, her cool mask slipped and he caught a glimpse of vulnerability in her eyes. “The mean one isn’t in there, is she?”

  He could almost laugh. It was easy to guess who she was thinking of. “Nikki?”

  Marlys nodded. “Definitely the mean one. Juliet’s too well-bred to make a scene if I walk inside the shop. And as for Cassandra, she’s . . .”

  Now it was Gabe’s turn to scowl. “Cassandra’s no push-over.”

  “No. She’s incredibly talented, though. I saw some of her designs the night of my father’s book launch party.”

  “Incredible covers it,” he murmured. He glanced over his shoulder at the shop, thinking of the woman inside. Her clever fingers, her generous spirit, her honest heart. No way would she keep something so important from him, he thought, relief making him unsteady again. Of course Cassandra would have told him if pregnancy was a real concern.

  “What’s with you two, anyway?” Marlys asked. “Nikki’s got Jay, Juliet’s married to Noah. Does that make you Cassandra’s . . . ?”

  Man. The word popped into his head and, damn, it startled him, coming three seconds after the realization they hadn’t made a baby. Why did he find it so easy to claim Cassandra? Maybe because he’d already done it once, when he’d spoken to her father’s sons outside the medical building. The word wife had slid from his mouth.

  “I’m her friend,” he said now instead, as if he’d ever actually been one to her. The truth was, their relationship had all been one-sided. It had been like that with Lynn, too, in the last years of their marriage, and God, wasn’t it easy for old patterns to reestablish themselves.

  “Friend?” Marlys repeated, then her attention shifted away from Gabe. Gazing over his shoulder, her eyes narrowed. “There are those kids,” she said. “From the other day. They have matches again. And cigarettes.”

  He whipped around to catch a glimpse of a posse of scruffy preteens descending the path that led to the beach below the bluff. He took off after them, just as one glanced over his shoulder. Shouting something to his buddies, the kid sped up, herding the other boys along with him. At least three of them had lit cigarettes in the forks of their skinny fingers.

  Half-sliding, half-running along the narrow, sandy path behind the boys, Gabe stopped the chase when they hit the firm sand of the beach and took off like bullets. Two of the little shits ran backward, their middle fingers up in the air, we-got-you grins on their faces.

  Shaking his head, Gabe turned back up the path. Maddie would have been closing in on that age, he thought. If she’d lived, would his sweet little girl have turned into a smoking, swearing hellion?

  He’d never know.

  At the thought, the despair he’d been holding back all day engulfed him. Stilling, he closed his eyes and suffered through the first crippling pangs of grief and remorse. Lynn’s annoyed voice in his head: “Couldn’t you at least once take her to dance practice?” Maddie’s plea: “Daddy, Daddy, don’t you want to watch me pirouette?”

  He tasted ash in his mouth and he knew it was from his heart incinerating all over again, just as it had done with such regularity over the last three years. It was a wonder he was still alive.

  It was no wonder he so regularly wished he wasn’t.

  His feet started to move, knowing that he wouldn’t find what he needed to cope out here. Breaching the top of the beach path, he glanced over at Malibu & Ewe. He could go in there. He could pretend he had a repair to do or that he wanted a mug of her disgusting dandelion tea and then he could hope that her presence or her chatter might stifle the voice drifting from the beckoning blackness. Already it was loud in his ears. Come to me. Come to me.

  But squaring his shoulders, he turned the other way. There was no reason to resist the call and avoid oblivion, and his friend deserved better than to be subject to his despondency. Instead, he’d join other old acquaintances. Good ol’ Bud. That wily Jack Daniel’s. Jose Cuervo was always up for a night on the town. He’d just meet his companions some place where the bartender wouldn’t call Cassandra.

  As he walked through the parking lot, he noticed Marlys’s car had gone. Apparently they’d both decided there were other places they’d rather be.

  Nine

  The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works is the family.

  —LEE IACOCCA

  “Come to me,” Cassandra said into her phone.

  “What?” On the other end of the call, Gabe coughed out the question.

  “Come to me over here at Malibu & Ewe. Better yet, just meet me on the beach down below the shop.”

  “Why?”

  She looked out her window and across the parking lot, dimly lit by the security lights that switched on at dark. His SUV was angled in one of the painted stalls, so she was certain he was still inside the business, though it had closed fifteen minutes before. “Stop asking questions and just do as I say. I have chocolate.”

  The suspicion in his voice turned to disbelief. “You do not.”

  “I do.” And she hoped the surprise of that would render him curious enough to do as she asked.

  “I’ll bet it’s carob,” he said, with mild disgust. “You know how I hate carob. It tastes like stale malted milk balls. So I think I‘ll pass on your offer.”

  She’d been afraid he’d say that. From what she’d been told, he was heading for a more destructive diversion altogether. “It’s real chocolate, Gabe.”

  “Froot Loop—”

  “You owe me. Didn’t you tell me that the other night?”

  “What other night?” His suspicion was back. “Exactly when?”

  She hardened her voice. “I think it was right after the bartender informed me that the stink on you was, indeed, exactly what it smelled like.”

  There was a weighty pause.

  “Please, Gabe.” Please don’t go for the booze over the beach with me.

  His sigh was heavy, too. “Give me a few minutes.”

  A few minutes were enough for her to build a tidy little bonfire in the concrete fire ring at the bottom of their bluff. She always stored some wooden pallets in her small side storeroom for just such a whim—though it was usually a summer impulse. Yet tonight was perfect for what she had in mind, with clear skies, little wind, and temperatures that had swung once more from winter to spring.

  Spread on the sand near the flames was a beach blanket she’d bought on a trip to Tijuana. Unpacked on it were the contents of the basket that she’d used to lure Gabe to the beach. She heard his voice before she saw him, the sound of his footsteps absorbed by the soft sand.

  “That actually looks like real chocolate,” he said. “What is all this stuff?”

  “It’s s’mores makings.” She’d already punctured a marshmallow with one of the expandable forks she’d found inside the basket. “What kind of roaster are you? I prefer the slow
toast, going for golden brown.”

  “Wait a minute.” She heard the raised eyebrows in his voice and congratulated herself. Curiosity was proving to be a successful means of distraction after all. “Not just chocolate, but marshmallows, too? Aren’t they made of that Evil White Stuff, namely . . . sugar?”

  Could he see her shrug in the light from the fire? “The gift is from Edward Malcolm the Fourth. Graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows. I was going to dump it all, but why should I when that’s exactly what he did to me two years ago? Worse, months later he decides he wants me back and he still can’t believe I won’t fall into his arms. Ergo, the persuasive present. It isn’t going to work, but I’ve decided we shouldn’t waste the goodies.”

  Instead of sitting on the blanket as she was, Gabe continued standing. His voice was sharp. “He came to the shop today?”

  “If he did, I didn’t see him,” she answered, remembering she’d told Gabe about Edward’s ongoing and annoying insistence that they retry their relationship. Apparently her landlord had been listening then, too. “I looked up at one point and the basket was on the counter accompanied by a note with his name on it.”

  Gabe stepped onto the blanket and she gave herself another metaphorical pat on the back. “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “I don’t like Edward.” Cassandra held up the second fork that she’d already threaded with an uncooked marshmallow. Her hands were covered with fingerless gloves that matched the thick sweater she’d handknit herself. “But I haven’t had a s’more since I was sixteen.”

  Hunkering down beside her, Gabe took the fork, though still obviously reluctant. He wasn’t wearing anything warmer than a pair of jeans and a denim workshirt.

  “You’re not cold?” she asked.

  He shoved the unmarshmallowed end of his fork in the sand and then reached into his back pocket. “I brought a hat,” he said, and pulled the beanie over his hair. She’d made it for him months ago, in the blue-and-gold colors of his alma mater. As far as she’d known, he’d thrown the thing out. There was a matching extra-long woolen scarf, but she’d never seen it again either.

  She shot another glance at him. It gave her a silly little thrill to see him wearing something she’d made with her hands. He picked up his fork and shoved the tines into the hottest part of the fire.

  “Why am I not surprised you go straight for flame?” she asked, as the white confection lit and started to burn.

  He brought it to his mouth and blew on the marshmallow to put out the little fire. It looked more like a lump of coal than a treat.

  “Who gets to eat something gooey and sweet first?” he asked, and to prove his point, he created a graham cracker and chocolate sandwich, biting into it just as she was turning her fork yet again.

  “You’ll burn your tongue,” she warned, worrying he’d selected the speedy method in order to hurry back to his original plans for the evening.

  His next words were somewhat muffled by the sticky treat. “I survived your kiss, didn’t I?”

  That shut her up for an uncharacteristic ten minutes. But maybe her silence was as effective as his curiosity, because Gabe stuck by her side on the blanket. Of course, knowing him, it was probably the sugar that kept him from running off. They made s’mores to the sound of the surf, Gabe’s cooking style enabling him to out-eat her three-to-one.

  She was licking chocolate from her thumb when he groaned and fell back onto the blanket. “I’m warning you, getting sick is another possibility.”

  “But you won’t have a headache later, which makes it so much better than the vice you were heading for tonight.”

  He didn’t move. “What makes you think that?” he asked slowly.

  “Jay called me. He said he stopped in to get swordfish steaks for his and Nikki’s dinner and that you were . . . in a mood that told him there was trouble brewing.”

  “I was in a mood because my manager, Charlie, told me at four this afternoon that he’d forgotten an appointment, which meant I’d have to stay and close.” A long moment passed. “Ah. I smell a second conspiracy.”

  “I’m not the only person who sees what’s going on with you, Gabe. Charlie worries, too. And Jay was concerned enough to call me.”

  “I’m surprised he did,” Gabe admitted.

  “Why?” Though she’d known her almost-brother-in-law was reluctant and had heard Nikki in the background objecting and cautioning throughout the phone call. Tell her I can keep him off a barstool, Cassandra had told Jay, while keeping myself out of trouble. While keeping her emotions unengaged. “Why would Jay be reluctant to call me?”

  “In a few weeks you’ll be related by marriage, Froot Loop. A good man does the right thing for family.”

  With a sigh, Cassandra lay back on the blanket, mimicking Gabe’s pose. Overhead, the swathe of the Milky Way lay like a thin film over the twinkling stars, just as she’d heard Jay’s concern for her coating his words during their conversation. He did care. Nikki and Juliet and Noah as well. It was exactly what she’d been seeking after her mother went off on her global adventure. Family ties to take away her loneliness. Her feeling of rootlessness.

  What a success! Her sisters were everything she’d dreamed of since childhood . . . and yet she hadn’t updated that dream once coming to understand about husbands and marriage. Both of those changed the relationships she could have with her siblings.

  Not that she didn’t want Nikki and Juliet to find their men and matrimonial happiness. And if she wanted the same for herself, well, Edward popped the question on a biweekly, if increasingly peevish, basis. He didn’t take her “no” for an answer, nor did he seem to believe her when she said she liked running her own business and was not interested in closing it or selling it so she could devote herself to becoming his devoted wife.

  “Where did you meet Edward anyway?” Gabe asked.

  Had she said his name out loud? Cassandra frowned. “It was before you owned the fish market . . . I met him there. He was with his mother and his two sisters. They’d gone for a Sunday drive and stopped in for lunch.”

  “Ah,” Gabe said.

  “ ‘Ah’?” She glanced over at him. The firelight and the starlight illuminated his chiseled features but didn’t make clear his expression.

  “Sisters? A mother who goes on Sunday drives with her children? All you’ve ever wanted, Cassandra. Can’t-Take-No-for-an-Answer Edward was just a bonus. Or, as we know now, just an ass.”

  She scowled at Gabe, resenting his flip, beachside analysis. “So, if we’re into swapping facts and then making something more out of them, where did you meet your wife?”

  “What?”

  Yeah, that shoe didn’t feel so comfortable on the other foot, did it? But she refused to back off. Gabe’s daughter and wife—particularly his wife—were taboo subjects she’d been tiptoeing around as long as she’d known him. She wasn’t any good at it, not really, no better at it than she was at keeping her emotions unengaged when it came to Gabe.

  Because here she was, despite her promises to Nikki, lying next to him, her body aware of every inch of his body next to hers. And worse, her heart was pounding and her lungs were tight as she brought up the woman whose ghost had always hovered between them.

  Her failure to keep her emotions unengaged made her voice sharp. “Where did you meet her? Lynn. We can say her name, right?”

  Lynn. We can say her name, right?

  Yet it was another of those unspoken words in Gabe’s vocabulary. Lynn. Maddie. Daughter. Wife.

  The s’mores sugar buzz had done something to dilute the day’s earlier grim mood. With the darkness still hovering all around him, he’d been forced to put off his next bender because of staffing problems. But now, lying beside Cassandra and with the taste of chocolate and marshmallow on his tongue, the voice in his head was muffled and those verboten names slid into his consciousness without the usual wrenching pain. God, it felt good. It felt like he could breathe, and maybe even live a little.


  He stared up at the sky. The stars overhead looked like the surface of the play table after his little girl had been into her craft box. The mess of sequins and glitter would cling to her small fingertips and be sprinkled like fairy freckles across her short nose. Look, Daddy, I made you a card. Mommy’s mad that you’re late, but I’m not.

  “Lynn was mad the first time I met her, too,” he murmured.

  “What?” Cassandra said. She scooted closer to him on the blanket and he could feel the warmth of her shoulder brushing his. The black mood moved even further away.

  “Lynn was mad the first time I met her,” he repeated.

  “I can sympathize,” the woman beside him said, with a teasing nudge to his side. Now her whole arm was against his. “What did you do to tick her off?”

  It startled him to realize that he could smile, thinking about it. “I was riding my bike near campus and mistook her for someone I knew. I came up behind her, and as a joke, when I passed by I swatted her on the butt.”

  “But it was the wrong butt.”

  Cute all the same, he remembered, but yes, the wrong butt. “When I looked back to laugh at my friend, I was looking into the fuming face of my future wife.”

  “So what did you do?” Cassandra asked. “Leap off your bike, drop to one knee, and propose right on the spot?”

  “Not even close,” he said, recalling his embarrassment. “I put on the afterburners and pedaled away as fast as my legs would carry me.”

  “And?” She nudged him again, and then the back of her hand brushed the back of his. Hers was encased in some sort of half-mitten thing that left her fingers bare. Their pinkies twined. “What happened then?”

  Gabe glanced over and saw the moonlight washing Cassandra’s beautiful face with a silver light. Like the sugary s’mores, the sight of it zapped a jolt of energy through his system. But she was his friend, his platonic, assuredly unpregnant friend, and it would be wise to remember that. “She caught up with me at the next stoplight.”

  “Then gave you a piece of her mind,” Cassandra finished for him.